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Art Texts Pics is an online magazine published both in Italian and in English. Established in 2010, Art Texts Pics contains interviews, conversations, essays, exhibition previews and event agendas. The magazine covers both well known, institutional realities – such as museum exhibitions, established galleries and foundations – and alternative, young spaces.

Stefano Arienti re-reads Giovanni Della Robbia’s masterpiece

The "Antinori Lunette", as it is known to art historians, currently owned by the Brooklyn Museum, is returning to Italy after about 500 years from when it was made, and it will be presented to the public at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, from 9 November 2017 to 8 April 2018, following an important restoration operation in the United States, with support from the Antinori family.

Ottobre 10, 2017

Elena Bordignon

Stefano Arienti is an artist who has always found inspiration in images taken from the iconography of art history: from the great Renaissance painters to 19th-century styles, right through to today. Stefano Arienti was born in Asola (Mantua) in 1961, and in his art, he works on images, transforming and simplifying them. His work is generated starting from existing materials, objects and images – which may be reproductions of pieces by the great art masters, or visions from popular imagery – and he changes their shape, a process that often alters their meaning.

It is precisely his skill in the palingenesis of images that led the Antinori family to invite him to work on a masterpiece that incorporates a wealth of tradition, dating back to the Renaissance: a lunette depicting TheResurrection of Christ, created in the early 16th century by Giovanni Della Robbia (Florence, 1469-1520), to a commission from Niccolò di Tommaso Antinori. The meeting between the contemporary artist Arienti, and the historical work – made possible by the Antinori Art Project – gave rise to a dual operation, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa, in two locations, one in Florence, and one in Bargino, San Casciano, in Val di Pesa.

The “Antinori Lunette”, as it is known to art historians, currently owned by the Brooklyn Museum, is returning to Italy after about 500 years from when it was made, and it will be presented to the public at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, from November 9th 2017 to April 8th 2018, following an important restoration operation in the United States, with support from the Antinori family.
In the exhibition “Da Brooklyn al Bargello: Giovanni della Robbia, la lunetta Antinori e Stefano Arienti” (From Brooklyn to the Bargello: Giovanni della Robbia, the Antinori Lunette and Stefano Arienti), at the Bargello Museum, where the lunette itself has been installed, Stefano Arienti reflects on the valuable masterpiece in his piece “Scena Fissa” (fixed scene), launching a complex interaction between Renaissance and contemporary art. At the same time, a new site-specific installation by Arienti will be shown at the Antinori winery in the Chianti Classico region, titled “Altorilievo.” This will become part of the family’s collection, giving a contemporary visibility to the powerful links that the family has with history and its support for the arts.

In this dual project, Stefano Arienti began from a study of what happened during the restoration of the Lunette, in which the various parts forming the composition were not joined or glued together as they were originally, but were purposely left separate: the 46 components are in view, each retaining a powerful identity in the final installation.
The work at the Bargello Museum is made on a two-dimensional support, with painting in metallized ink, gold and copper, on a white dustproof site canvas, depicting the figures that appear in the Lunette, slightly increased in dimensions and reaching almost full size, 1:1. These works are reminiscent of preparatory drawings for frescoes, and they reveal the compositional modernity of the composition and the sculptural forms in this late Renaissance masterpiece. The two colours used, and the two-dimensionality of the figures, give extra emphasis to the lines of the drawing.

“Altorilievo”, created for the “Vinsantaia” (location where barrels of Vinsanto are fermented) of the Antinori winery in the Chianti Classico district, is based on the deconstruction of a sculptural bas-relief, in which the figures of the lunette, once again monochrome, are redeveloped in the 46 structural units that appear in the masterpiece by della Robbia, with a new spatial arrangement of the figures. The work, also created on dustproof site canvas, takes on an almost marble-like three-dimensionality, giving the artist the chance to achieve a thickness analogous to that of the original work made in glazed terracotta.